FUTURAMA: BENDER'S GAME

The Charge

The Case

Fry and the crew from Planet Express come roaring back in for their third
direct-to-DVD adventure, Futurama: Bender's Game, this time tearing a Fry
Hole directly through the fantasy world of Dungeons & Dragons in loving
homage to D&D creator Gary Gygax, whose recent passing helped inspired the
film. More Futurama in our lives is never a bad thing, but does this
newest adventure live up to the show's previously established lofty
standards?

The story: as the galaxy's supply of dark matter, which fuel's space travel,
begins to run low, prices at the pumps are at an all-time high. Trying to save a
buck, the Professor restricts leisure usage of the Planet Express ship in order
to conserve. As it turns out, the Professor knows more about the shortage than
previously revealed. While working at Mom's, the mega-corporation that now
controls Mombil and the world's dark matter supplies, he made some alarming
discoveries about the nature of the energy source -- and its potential
undoing.

Meanwhile, Bender and the kids enjoy a rousing game of Dungeons &
Dragons, which Bender struggles to appreciate, being deficient in the
imagination department. Fully immersing himself into the fantasy world, he
re-imagines himself as Titanius Anglesmith, Fancyman of Cornwood. His friends
are unable to convince Titanius (nee Bender) of his true humble robotic roots
and are forced to commit him to the HAL Institute for Criminally Insane Robots
for recovery.

As Bender struggles to regain his sanity (e.g., break free), the Professor
leads a charge against Mom and her conglomerate of energy controlling thugs in
order to liberate the world from her grip on energy. As things often go in the
future, one event leads to another; in the end, Bender's fantasy world of
Cornwood turns real and drops the Planet Express crew (and Mom) into a world of
dungeons, dragons, and wizards. Don't ask how -- it's not important.

One thing is for certain -- I'm going to miss Futurama. Woe to the
show that nobody appreciated, only now getting the due it earned in popular
culture, agonizing months before releasing its final straight-to-DVD feature and
vanishing from our lives forever. Hope springs eternal, of course, but a show
only gets so many third and fourth chances. This inherent tragedy of this
brilliant cartoon's passing is further compounded by the slow, inexorable
decline of these straight-to-DVD features, which started off solid and have been
getting...less so.

Two separate films are dueling within Bender's Game, the first about
environmental themes and science fiction-styled allegories on declining oil
reserves and the other a loving tribute to all things Gary Gygax and J.R.R
Tolkien. One might take a wild stab and assume the nerdy D&D foray would be
the superior element and the other element preachy and heavy handed...but as it
turns out, it is the other way around. The crisis surround dwindling dark matter
supplies is heartwarmingly fun, poignant, and full of hilarious
Futurama-styled bumbling (albeit extraordinarily familiar bumbling, taken
page-for-page from the previous environmental-themed episodes, especially
"Crimes Of The Hot"). It is repetitive, but shows the series at its
most approachable. The adventure into Dungeons & Dragons world is novel,
but...well, lame.

I cannot even believe I am using the word "lame" in a review about
Futurama. This is going to send me straight to nerd therapy. Alas, I
cannot be but truthful in my condemnation of Bender's Game and its
mediocrity. There are some funny moments, but just as many jokes that fall
painfully flat; almost violently so, as if the writers simply forgot how to pull
this off. These made-for-DVD movies have become nothing but exercises in
self-referential humor, and that is not the place where Futurama should
ever be. Family Guy might be content to squander its comedic potential in
this purgatory, but please no...not Futurama! So much of the humor in
Bender's Game are simple re-appearances of old gags and characters, as if
to say "hey, remember that joke we did back in Season Two that was so
funny? Well, here it is again!"

This kind of comedy is destructive, like eating away at one's own body fat
for sustenance. Sure, you get some laughs and get lean, but eventually the jokes
leave naught but a hollow empty shell behind. This is not to dismiss the humor
of Bender's Game right out of hand, as anyone who has taken the
twenty-sided die for a roll in their lifetime will find the nerd-related gags in
Bender's Game to be particularly sly. Unfortunately, this nerd humor
fails to compensate for an overall jumbled narrative and repetitive gags. The
transition between "environmental message" and "fantasy
world" is awkward and poorly conceived, and it really feels as if two
entirely contradictory storylines were crammed into a single DVD feature simply
because the writers wanted to get every possible idea packed into Bender's
Game.

So what to do with Futurama: Bender's Game? On the one hand, it's
Futurama, so it is automatically christened as awesome. On the other
hand, even when compared to previous "episodes" in this
"season" (Futurama: Bender's Big Score and Futurama: The
Beast with a Billion Backs), this feature feels oddly sub-par. It's still
fun and full of some amazing gags, but one cannot escape the nagging realization
that these features are not improving as they continue. If you're a fan of
fantasy and role playing games, you'll probably get a kick out of it more than
most, but to be honest, if this film were broken into standalone episodes, only
half of them would be any good -- the rest would be the "mediocre"
episodes people skip when watching them on DVD.

As for technical presentation, here is where our coverage gets wonky. DVD
Verdict only received a screener copy from Fox of this title, so we can't quite
give you an accurate representation of what the retail product is like. Our copy
was laden with blocky artifacts and pervasive compression that at times made
Bender's Game actually nauseating to watch. I guess Fox really wants
people to be buying the Blu-Ray edition of the title, which by all accounts of
our review of Futurama: Bender's Game (Blu-Ray) is a stunning technical
triumph. Go for that if you can. The audio on our screener copy was a boisterous
5.1 surround presentation, which hopefully is the same version that makes it to
the retail edition, because it rocks the house. Punchy and energetic, the rear
channels sweep in with every opportunity, with clear dialogue and overactive
bass response. It is an excellent presentation, but it makes the shoddy visuals
all the more lamentable.

In terms of extras (disclaimer: we assume these are identical to the retail
version but can offer no assurances to this fact) the disc is nicely packed for
a single-disc release, with extras coming out the Hawking Hole. A full-length
audio commentary track is first out of the gate with creators Matt Groening and
David X. Cohen, voice actors Billy West, John DiMaggio, and Tress MacNeille,
director Dwayne Carey-Hill, writer Mike Rowe, and producer Claudia Katz. If
you've spent any time listening to the commentary tracks on the Futurama
television series DVDs, you know exactly what kind of raucous, hilarious affair
to expect here. We get a peculiar feature, "Futurama Genetics Lab,"
allowing viewers to mix-and-match body parts onto on-screen characters -- what
is this, a Disney release? "D&D&F: Dungeons & Dragons &
Futurama" discusses with creators their early childhood memories of being
gigantic women-repulsing nerds, and a story animatic recreates the first half of
Bender's Game in storyboard. The rest of the extras are take-or-leave,
but nice to have: we get a 3D model gallery, one deleted sequence, "How to
Draw Futurama in 83 Easy Steps" (pretty self-explanatory, if a bit
tongue-in-cheek) as well as "Blooperama 2," showing the voice actors
futzing their dialogue up during recording. Finally, we get an amusing
anti-piracy warning (hosted by Bender) and a preview for the final
Futurama feature, Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder. It's an
impressive offering for a single-disc screener, but again -- screener, so no
promises.

It saddens my Futurama-loving heart to admit this aloud, but
Bender's Game is a step backwards for the franchise, at a time when we
only really have one or two steps left. The feature is touching and heartwarming
and features all our favorite characters, but its emphasis on environmental
themes should not extend to the recycling of comedy. Too much of this feature is
content to cram every single extra, guest star, cameo character, and obscure
one-gag joke featured in past seasons into every nook and cranny, regardless of
whether they belong or not. Bender's Game is still funny, but it just
isn't up to the show's own standards.

Ah, who am I kidding? Even its weaker moments are still hands above
everything else on television, especially given the crudely dire state of
animation these days. Bender's Game is far from the finest moment of the
franchise, but we can forgive that. It's still Futurama, and it's still
one of the best animated shows ever. You know you're going to buy it, and you
know you're going to love it. It's not perfect, but it's better than no
Futurama of any kind.

Oh Fox, why must you break our heart over and over? This is like tearing a
bandage off in agonizing, slow, direct-to-DVD doses. Put the darn show back on
the air and end the torment already! Not guilty, but not as innocent as in cases
past.